To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu.
-----------------------------------------------
This story was printed from CdrInfo.com,
located at http://www.cdrinfo.com.
-----------------------------------------------

Microsoft's chief executive vowed last year to crush Google, while a Google executive urged colleagues to pursue the hiring of a Microsoft employee "like wolves," according to documents filed on Friday in an increasingly bitter legal battle.

The allegations, filed in a Washington State court, came in a showdown prompted by Google's hiring in
July of a former Microsoft executive, Kai-Fu Lee, to oversee a research and development center that
Google plans in China.

Mr. Lee, known for his work on computer recognition of language, started at Google the day after he
resigned from Microsoft.

Google's filing included a sworn declaration by a former Microsoft engineer, Mark Lucovsky, who said
he met last November with Microsoft's chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, to discuss his decision to
leave the company after six years.

After learning that Mr. Lucovsky was taking a job at Google, Mr. Ballmer picked up his chair and
hurled it across his office, according to the declaration. Mr. Ballmer then berated Google's chief
executive, Eric E. Schmidt, Mr. Lucovsky recalled, saying he was going to "bury that guy - I have
done it before, and I will do it again." He also said Mr. Ballmer vowed to "kill Google."

Before joining Google, Mr. Schmidt was a top executive at Sun Microsystems and at Novell, companies
that also battled Microsoft.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Ballmer described Mr. Lucovsky's recollection as a "gross
exaggeration."

Microsoft is suing to prevent Mr. Lee from leading Google's expansion in China, saying those duties
would violate a noncompetition provision in his employment contract.

Google has depicted Microsoft's lawsuit as a form of intimidation meant to thwart a fast-growing
rival.

In late July, Microsoft won a court order temporarily barring Mr. Lee from performing the duties
Google hired him to do, and at a hearing on Tuesday it will seek an extension of that order until the
case goes to trial in January.

In its brief on Friday, Microsoft charged that Mr. Lee sent confidential documents about the
company's China strategy to Google a month before he was hired. Google has insisted that all the
material that Mr. Lee relayed to the company was already public.

Microsoft also released an e-mail message from Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's director of business
development, in an attempt to prove that Google wanted Mr. Lee for projects besides the new China
center.

"I all but insist that we pull out all the stops and pursue him like wolves," Mr. Rosenberg wrote of
Mr. Lee. "He is an all-star and will contribute in ways that go substantially beyond China."

The two sides will face each other in court again on Tuesday when Microsoft will ask a court to
extend that order until the matter comes to trial in January.